Point to where the sky is blue

May. 24th, 2011

May. 24th, 2011

It's been a somewhat stressful day. I'm off to Norway on Thursday (ash cloud permitting). I had Brownies last night, Rangers tonight and there's a work social tomorrow night. I initially was hesitant on it, being the night before I fly off. Yesterday Daisy asked if I was coming and I told her it depends on how I get on with my packing. Her response: "You've got to come! Pack pack pack!" I do like to try and pretend to be sociable and I'd like to go, so I've spent today packing. After Brownies last night, I had too much pasta and turned limp and shivery - yeah, pasta's really bad for me - and didn't have the energy to stand up, let alone do anything constructive. I did a chunk of packing this morning, spent the morning at work making a list of things I needed To Do, To Pack in Hand Luggage and To Pack in Hold Luggage and at lunchtime and since I've got home, I've been going down the list. I just froze over at lunchtime, though. You know when you're stressed and you've got a thousand things to do and your body decides the best way to cope is to shut down? That. Packing, lunch, preparing for Rangers, making myself swallow a teeny-weeny pill, finding my phone... I found myself just standing in the kitchen, too overwhelmed to do any of it.

Anyway, we're now down to the last few things. Finding a good map at the correct scale so I can find my way around the two cities. Pretty much all the packing is done. There's still things like putting my cards in my travel wallet and packing my sunglasses - can't do either until I get home after the social tomorrow. And packing my phone, charger, hairbrush and pyjamas - all to be done when I wake up at ouch o'clock on Thursday. And food, but I need to go shopping for that on the way to Rangers. I have emptied my camera, I have put my writing and the entire first season of Boardwalk Empire on my (newly charged) netbook and packed the lot.

Now to watch the ash and quiver until I'm actually in the air (when I remember that I'm a slightly nervous flyer. Even I forget this. I look forward to plane journeys for months. I sit in my seat and bounce like a child and stare out of the window and adore both take-off and landing. I love flying. But when we're levelling off and the engines go quiet, I get twitchy. And when the turbulence is bad enough for the pilot to put the seatbelt signs on, I become convinced we're about to be thrown out of the air and die hideously. But if the engines are noisy and the flight is smooth, I love flying and I will sit there and be scornful of anyone who is nervous). I have decided that my next holiday will be to Iceland, armed with a very large cork. Damn them and their volcanoes.

Also, I am tired. I couldn't sleep Sunday night because my brain was dancing around singing about pirates all night and I woke up far too early this morning and didn't get back to sleep properly. And if I go to bed with the window open, it's too cold to sleep and I am forced to close it. But if the window is closed, I wake up at just-before-sunrise (which is quite early in summer) because I'm hideously uncomfortable without some fresh air, so that's been disturbing me every night for the last week or so. So I am quite tired, especially in the mornings, and therefore liable to uncharacteristic.